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Wasteland 3 will come to PC and consoles courtesy of crowdfunding platform Fig

InXile Entertainment teased 'buried secrets, lost technology, fearsome lunatics, and deadly factions.'

David Craddock

September 28, 2016 12:38 PM

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InXile Entertainment announced Wasteland 3 for PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. The game is in development and will being funded through Fig, a crowdfunding platform created by game developers and targeted at games, when the campaign goes live on October 5.

Brian Fargo, founder of inXile, spoke to Polygon about the campaign and some of the innovations players can expect in Wasteland 3. "We’re going to have a f*cking blast with it. And it’s not just solving puzzles together. It’s about narrative multiplayer and what can happen when the two of us are in a world, independent of each other, doing other things on the map."

Fargo illustrated a scenario where two players, each in charge of a team of Rangers, progress the story by occasionally splitting off to do their own thing. Sometimes, their choices will clash.

"Let’s say that you’re sleeping and I go on a mission where there’s a sickness among some cattle. I decide the resolve it by killing them all. You wake up and you’re notified that mission is complete. But when you get back to the game there’s a radio call. The town? They’re kind of pissed about that. They want money for those cattle. You can convince your friend to pay up, or you could pay it yourself. You could even refuse to pay entirely and live with the consequences."

Wasteland 3's campaign comes with a funding goal of $2.75 million. Fargo and his team likely arrived at that number by analyzing how much they asked for when they funded Wasteland 2 on Kickstarter back in 2012, and the amount they ended up raising. Wasteland 2 started with a goal of $900,000 but pulled in over $2.9 million when all was said and done, raising the bar for game-development Kickstarter campaigns at the time.

That Fargo chose Fig over Kickstarter this time around only makes sense: he sits on the platform's advisory board. Fig differs from Kickstarter in that it offers equity to investors alongside traditional crowdfunding tchotchkes like posters and action figures.

David Craddock

Long Reads Editor

David L. Craddock writes fiction, nonfiction, and grocery lists. He is the author of the Stay Awhile and Listen series, and the Gairden Chronicles series of fantasy novels for young adults. Outside of writing, he enjoys playing Mario, Zelda, and Dark Souls games, and will be happy to discuss at length the myriad reasons why Dark Souls 2 is the best in the series. Follow him online at davidlcraddock.com and @davidlcraddock.